Could have been much better.

Rating: 5/10 (2 November 2006)

To make a film good, not only does it need to look good, it also needs a good story. The Island definitely has the good looks of a potentially great film, but I'm afraid the story is, well, a different story.
The idea the film is founded upon is very interesting. In the not-too-distant future, people can buy clones to harvest organs from, should they ever need them. These clones are of course totally oblivious of this fact, and they are fed a substitute world, in which they are made to believe they are the only survivors of a world-wide viral disease. Every now and then, a lucky winner will be selected through "The Lottery". This lucky bird will be transported to "The Island", the world's last pathogen-free zone. However, the "winners" are actually chopped up for their organs. And I don't mean a church organ, either. I will not go into any more details, as you can just as well watch the film for those.
Although the basics of the story are very interesting, and possess the potential to truly make a classic film, they don't. The film focuses on two characters, who escape to discover their world is a figment of someone elses imagination. Up to this point, it is still promising enough. However, as soon as they have accomplished the actual escape, the film turns into a cliché Hollywood action/sci-fi/love story. Despite a few amusing twists and turns, the rest of the storyline is as predictable as a very predictable thing. "As long as stuff explodes, and I throw in some sex without showing actual sex, it will be good," the director must have thought. Unfortunately, he is wrong.
I was also left wondering, haven't we seen all this before? Growing humans like crop happened in the Matrix, as did the virtual world in which we are ignorantly and thus blissfully living. Cloning happens in about 75 percent of the science fiction films, and the sleep-conditioning could have been taken straight out of Brave New World...
Which brings me to another point. Although it is not a direct cinematographic version of the book Brave New World, the similarities are still obviously present. An outsider gets dropped in a completely different world and society from the one he grew up in, people are grown rather than born, the aforementioned hypnopaedia... Yes, I assume it is safe to conclude that Michael Bay read his Brave New World before commencing the filming of The Island.
In conclusion, I will say the following: The Island has potential. Unfortunately, it washes most of it down the drain instead of nurturing it, eventually making it bloom into a classic film. I suppose that it is a commercial success, and isn't that what Hollywood is all about? However, I was left disappointed. Both the story and the presentation could have been so much better, if only the creators would have cared a little less about making a bundle, and a little more about making a good film. But who am I to question Hollywood?